Cycling. Recumbents. Babies. Glasgow.

Year of the dad starts today. Apparently.

It was pointed out on our NCT Facebook group (what do you mean your antenatal group isn’t still in touch?) that today marks the official launch of the Year of the Dad.

If you weren’t aware, this is not an excuse for you to have steak every night for a year, but instead:

A celebration of the difference a great dad can make! A year of celebration, insight and collaboration to promote the importance of fathers in child development and support men to be the dads they want to be. Organised by Fathers Network Scotland in partnership with a range of organisations, it is supported by the Scottish Government and runs until the end of 2016.www.YearOfTheDad.org

I’ve had a (very) quick poke about the website. It seems to be a mix of fairly trivial stuff delivered in what is apparently dad-speak (“see if there’s a way of boxing clever to [mold your work hours around being a dad]”), with gobbets of useful stuff hidden in amongst (did you know you’re allowed time off to go to two antenatal appointments?). Hopefully they’ll sort out some of the website errors in short order (the “more information” hyperlink for that antenatal fact still points to the Apple homepage, for example).

There’s also a host of stuff encouraging employers to be dad-friendly, which I suspect is going to be the main use for the site. Still, something to keep an eye on.

Entirely by coincidence, mini-DarkerSide and I had some spectacular father-son time today, heading over to Edinburgh for several hours of playing on an Urban Arrow electric cargo bike. We traveled on four trains, saw boats and planes (as well as the inevitable surfeit of weird bikes), shared a number of mummy-made sausage sandwiches, had hot milk with bonus (and un-requested…) chocolate sprinkles, got tired and emotional (in the non-political sense), and generally had a marvelous time.

Short review of the UA to follow in a few days. For now, you’ll just have to sate yourself with the photo at the top.

@DarkerSide

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